TLDR: Due to splash effects, Streak SRMs typically do much more damage than the quoted 2.5 per missile. Normal values are between 3.5 and 15 damage/missile (as much as a Gauss slug), with very compact 'mechs taking the most damage. Conventional SRM and LRM damage is also much higher than usually believed.

Update: My data were collected in Testing Grounds, but WardenWolf has confirmed some of the data in live play. See http://www.youtube.c...?v=lJQxOdRS3Ug. Many other confirmations can be found in the replies.

Update: A section on weapon stats was added.

Update: See Paul's [first] response, which is quoted at the end of this post.

Just an update. We will be removing splash damage until further tuning can be done that takes into account the new Mechs and their respective hit boxes. The splash damage will be removed in the April 2nd patch.

Test Results & Discussion

In reading the following, keep in mind that missiles do splash damage and that the amount done (as well as the components damaged) depends on the missiles' impact point, which is random. (I did make sure that all missiles hit their targets.) The inconsistent damage among the various tests is a reflection of the game mechanics. See the Methodology section for more information on testing procedures.

I conducted the first tests from a CPLT-A1 with 6 x Streak SRM 2 positioned 20 m in front of an AS7-D (921 HP) and aiming (roughly) for the torso center of mass. The choice of aimpoint appears to have no major effect on the impact point--the missiles go where they will. The results were as follows:

[The numbers in this section were originally slightly off due to arithmetic errors in computing the total HP for each 'mech. What was I doing? All incorrect originals have been crossed out and the correct numbers inserted. Sorry for any confusion this may have caused.]

weighted (by number of missiles fired) average over all tests = 3.8 3.9 damage/missile

This is 52% 56% higher than the baseline 2.5 damage/missile--interesting!

Next, I used the typical RVN-3L build (dual Streak SRM 2 and 295XL engine) and fired while orbiting at close range to get results representing typical combat use. Generally, I made no effort to distribute the damage evenly and simply fired as often as possible while maneuvering around the target. The exceptions are the Commando and Jenner tests, where the missiles were fired mostly from the front, so that I could avoid prematurely blowing off limbs and ruining the data. The results are given by target chassis.

Streak SRM damage is amplified by 420 460 to 620% 660%against the Commando. Each missile does roughly the same damage as a Gauss slug, and this is from a fire-and-forget weapon weighing (with ammo) 2.5 tons. I am not making these numbers up. Try it yourself.

Clearly, the mental picture that most of us have had about how Streaks deal damage--that is, 2.5 total damage/missile spread over various components--is wrong. Streaks seem to be doing too much damage because this is, in fact, what is happening--not merely because it is annoying to be killed by them and we are naturally inclined to make excuses.

Methodology

I conducted all tests in the Testing Grounds mode. I have assumed that all 'mechs present have their stock armor layout. This can easily be checked by firing, at a given location, some combination of non-missile weapons that does the same amount of damage as the location has armor points. The internal structure may be checked in the same way after the armor has been removed. In doing a few of these checks, I did not notice any discrepancies.

Clearly, I have also assumed that the damage system works (in its other particulars) on Testing Grounds in the same way that it does in multiplayer matches. This is harder to check, but I am aware of no reason to doubt the assumption.

The total HP for a given mech may be calculated as follows:

[total HP] = [stock armor HP]+[total structure HP],

where

[total structure HP] = ([max. armor HP]-18)/2+15.

This is because

the head always has 15 structure HP and 18 maximum armor HP, and

otherwise, the amount of internal structure HP for a given location is always half the maximum armor HP for that location.

I have assumed that the "health percentage" readout over the target gives the current HP (armor plus structure) divided by the total HP, from which the total number of armor and structure HP destroyed can easily be calculated. Again, the assumption about how the health percentage works can be checked.

In testing, it is important not to blow off limbs with HP remaining, because not all of the resulting drop in the health percentage is due directly to weapon damage.

Comparison with Medium Laser

In light of the following comparison, it is almost unnecessary to make an argument that the Streak SRM 2 is an unbalanced weapon.

Find the distance from this point to the center of mass (or some other reference point) of every other hit location of the target.

Reduce the damage (from a maximum of 2.5) based on these distances, and apply the result to each location.

The damage done might also incorporate some kind of "capture area" concept (i.e., larger cross-sectional areas take more damage). If you have solid information about this, please post it.

Clearly, compact 'mechs (not necessarily low-tonnage 'mechs)--those with many hit locations close together--would take the most damage under this system. For example, the 15 damage typical on the Commando--a very compact 'mech--is consistent with taking the full 2.5 damage per missile to six locations simultaneously.

How might it be fixed?

Remove splash damage. Every missile deals its damage to the location it hits.

Other Interesting Stuff

Based on my tests, conventional SRMs deal damage in the same way as Streak SRMs, except that you have more control over the impact point at close range. If, in your Splat Cat, you alpha an Atlas in the CT at about 20 m range, you will do roughly 160 damage (4.3 damage/missile), not 90, as is typically believed.

LRM damage is also higher than would be expected. Firing an LRM 5 at an Atlas from about 200 m, I observe 3.1 damage/missile (not 1.8) as a typical value. Doing the same thing versus an Awesome at about 700 m, I observe about 5.8 damage/missile. I cannot be sure that all missiles hit, so the actual damage per missile may be even higher (although only the missiles that hit are important).

Try walking right up to one side of an Atlas in a Catapult. Fire an SRM 6 into its knee from a distance of 15 to 20 m. You will find that it takes many more shots than would be expected to destroy the leg, even though it appears that all the missiles hit. Edit: I just tested this in an A1, and it took 11 SRM 6 salvoes (66 missiles) to remove the armor from one of an Atlas's legs, each of which has 82 points of armor. That's about1.2 damage/missile. I have only noticed this when shooting an Atlas in the knee from the side; shooting 'mechs in the torso has always done more damage than expected. The Atlas leg bug may well have nothing to do with the overall point of the post. [Edit: This is a known issue.]

Concerning Weapon Stats

Some people have calculated damage per missile numbers from their stats and found values closer to the nominal ones. For the record, here are my current missile stats:

These numbers are lower than the ones obtained by firing at stationary targets. Why?

The answer is probably that my experiments show what happens when missiles mostly strike the torso directly, but the statistics count all hits. A more detailed explanation is given in the next three paragraphs.

At the end of the Other Interesting Stuff section, I reported that shooting an Atlas in the knee results in around 1.2 damage/missile, or about half of the nominal 2.5 damage/missile. I just tried (in Testing Grounds with an SRM 6) shooting a Catapult below the knee, shooting an Atlas in the forearm, and shooting a Centurion both in the forearm and below the knee. In all cases, it took more salvoes to remove the armor than than would be expected if all missiles did at least 2.5 damage to the location struck. This is in marked contrast to what typically happens when the missiles are fired at the torso center of mass, where we get a moderate to massive amplification of damage, depending on the target 'mech.

Also, note that missiles that strike nearby terrain deal a small amount of splash damage (this is especially true of LRMs). If this happens, the missile responsible is probably counted as a hit in the stats.

Finally, note that most of the larger 'mechs saw only a modest amplification of damage in the "ideal" case of most missiles striking the torso (e.g., Catapult 20%, Atlas 40%). Hits against Commandos, Spiders, etc. will typically form only a small part of a given player's total SRM hits, with hits against larger 'mechs forming the majority (because these are both more common and easier to hit). Under these circumstances, it is not hard to see how the resulting considerable (but not ridiculous--say 50%) average amplification for torso hits could be offset by the extremity-hit and near-miss-splash-damage effects, winding up (for SRMs) in the 2.5 to 3 damage/missile range in the stats.

In summary, I suspect that we are not seeing (for SRMs) 7+ damage/missile all the time in the stats, because

hits to extremities often deal sharply reduced damage,

near misses that strike objects/terrain and result in minor splash damage are probably counted as "hits," and

not every 'mech is a Commando.

In any case, I do not view the fact that most people's SRM stats lie in the 2.5 to 3 damage/missile range as an argument that nothing is wrong with the current missile damage system. It is easy to verify that

a single SRM that strikes a Commando in the torso usually deals about 15 damage,

smaller but significant damage amplification occurs for many other 'mechs, and

missiles that strike the extremities of many 'mechs deal significantly less damage than expected, making it more difficult to damage limbs (even when all missiles hit) than with other weapons.

All of these are serious problems, regardless of the averages. The average is not the distribution.

Paul Inouye's response, quoted for your convenience:

Paul Inouye, on 14 March 2013 - 12:53 PM, said:

Interesting and very thorough testing by the OP and many kudos for the in-depth write-up.
This problem has 2 levels.

First is that Testing Grounds has quite a few issues when reporting damage and the numbers you're seeing are inflated quite a bit (almost double). We will be addressing this bug and others as Testing Grounds matures over time.

Second, this does NOT eliminate the findings that S-SRMs AND SRMs are doing more damage than intended. This is not due to some top secret, behind your back weapon balancing. It has to do with splash damage, how it was first implemented and the new smaller Mechs coming out.

Here is one of the scenarios described and I've turned on the debug tools to let us see exactly what is going on in terms of hits and damage being done.

The Raven 3L has just fired 1 volley of 2 x S-SRM2 at the Commando 1B. As you can see, the amount of damage done to the Commando does not make sense. There is a total of 51.5 armor being stripped off the Commando. We've been able to reproduce this repeatedly and we're getting an average damage of 12.9 per missile. Quite a bit higher than the intended 2.5 damage per missile plus splash damage.

So what has happened to cause this? Smaller Mechs and more complex geometry than what was available when the splash damage system first went into the game. When SRM splash damage went into the game, there were a total of 4 Mechs available to the playerbase. The Jenner, Hunchback, Catapult and the Atlas. These 4 Mechs have very unique targeting silhouettes and were used to calculate the radius of splash damage per missile. Now what has happened is that the splash damage across smaller Mechs or Mechs with more complex/tighter component positioning are getting hit with more splash damage than intended.

In the image below, you can see how much overlap the damage done to the Commando has and how that it is taking significantly more splash damage than it should.

We are looking at the tuning for these hit locations/splash damage and will update as soon as possible.

Over 120 LRMs I was closer to 1.6 damage per (6 hp off in the calculations due to laziness/not factoring the head internals out). Also my weapon stats ingame report "real" 1.6 damage-ish for LRMs if you divide total damage / hits. Not sure how you managed to get your values. Would love a video.

May look into this myself and see the results i get from the same tests.

It would explain a lot about the effectiveness of missiles compared to other weapons.
It also explains why my commando can get hit by ppcs and be ok (ish), but a single 2xSSRM volley sends my TDK into critical.

Good work investigating this. It certainly explains why a Raven with an alpha of supposedly 25 seems to be doing a lot more damage to lights and mediums. Personally, considering streaks are already the easiest weapon to use, I feel they should remove splash damage form them; thereby making srm2s or s4m4s a valid alternative. Streaks would still have their place as homing missiles that can be shot from almost any angle and still hit fast targets and srms would have splash damage so their overall damage would be higher; which makes sense as you have to actually aim them. The more skill a weapon requires the more damage it should do IMO.

I've suspected for a while now that splash isn't calculating correctly, but rather overlapping onto extra parts. Easy enough to test, SRM2 + NARC launcher port in training grounds.

OK yeah definitely broken. 10 SRM2 missiles (5 volleys essentially) directly hitting the left arm of a stock com-1B took out the TORSO and HURT THE LEG BADLY on that side before they killed the arm. SPLASH DAMAGE IS LITERALLY APPLYING 100% TO ANY SECTION IT TOUCHES, AND IS HITTING MULTIPLE SECTIONS.

REPEATED AND RECONFIRMED ON CICADA 2A, ANY HIT WHERE THE SPLASH AREA OVERLAPS 2 OR MORE PARTS APPLIES FULL DAMAGE TO ALL PARTS.

This is probably why torso armor is evaporating so quickly vs SRM6 Cats or LRM boats. Note I am using a NORMAL SRM2, not a STREAK, and I am visually confirming in training grounds by 'walking' my fire up a leg or up and down an arm and watching what sections it damages and how quickly they die.

Awesome work OP! It's really impressive, and that huge damage increase for commandos. WOW! Kinda figured it was wrong when I was in my 3L chasing down a commando. 2 volleys of my streaks into it's back was likely to kill it 100%. I stopped playing it after I did that for a day, it's just way wrong. Haven't put an engine in my 3L for a few months.
Hopefully the splash damage is a little less on my jagermechs

WE HAVE BEEN OVER THIS BEFORE! The problem is the splash radius on the missile explosion is too large. Causing it to intersect multiple sections of a mech, particularly on smaller mechs where sections are closer together, resulting in double or even triple hits. STREAKS DONT NEED SPLASH DAMAGE!!!!

WE HAVE BEEN OVER THIS BEFORE! The problem is the splash radius on the missile explosion is too large. Causing it to intersect multiple sections of a mech, particularly on smaller mechs where sections are closer together, resulting in double or even triple hits. STREAKS DONT NEED SPLASH DAMAGE!!!!

doesn't make sense. 1 missile fired should do 2.5 maximum to 1 section. 2 missiles fired should do 5 maximum damage to one section (even if slashed from another section).

theres some bug thats amplifying the damage. beyond splash. like a respash effect, where the splash damage is also applying splash damage.

...well, this does explain a few things, I suspect this isn't a recent bug either, as overall missile damage doesn't appear to have spiked. I always felt missiles were unbalanced, but it's worse than I thought. This means, for example, LRM-20s actually have something like...what, 10-12 dps? And SRM 6s are at something like 7. No wonder the LB-X always sucked compared to SRMs, even though they work on nearly identical mechanics.

Over 120 LRMs I was closer to 1.6 damage per (6 hp off in the calculations due to laziness/not factoring the head internals out). Also my weapon stats ingame report "real" 1.6 damage-ish for LRMs if you divide total damage / hits. Not sure how you managed to get your values. Would love a video.

It's too late for me today, else I'd hop in to test with SRMs, too.

To reproduce my LRM results, load up Testing Grounds, stand in D5 on Frozen City, and shoot the Awesome to the northwest with an LRM 5. You should find that it goes down to 30-35% health by about the eighth salvo (40 missiles). The range is about 700 m, and you will be nearly level with the Awesome. The other test involved shooting LRM 5s from 200 m in front of the Atlas on River City.

"Leg damage from explosive weapons has a possibility of being a fraction of what it should be [Resolved]

BUG : We have been adding more and more pieces to the legs of mech for various reasons. This has caused our explosion engulf code to exhibit an issue by dealing less damage than it should to the leg components from explosive weapons in certain situations.

NOTES : The system has now been upgraded to instead of using the number of pieces in the leg to the actual volume the pieces take up. Way more accurate, way more robust. This would also have affected arms if they were made of many pieces, but none really are. "

this is a dev post from thomas maybe somehow related? this is about reduction in damage though.

doesn't make sense. 1 missile fired should do 2.5 maximum to 1 section. 2 missiles fired should do 5 maximum damage to one section (even if slashed from another section).

theres some bug thats amplifying the damage. beyond splash. like a respash effect, where the splash damage is also applying splash damage.

The issue is that you are doing 2.5 damage to say the CT, 1.5 damage to the left and right torso's. So thats 5.5 damage after just one missile. So the CT is down 2.5 damage, and both side torso's are down 1.5. You fire just one more missile, and it happens to hit the left torso, that's 2.5 damage on the left torso, and 1.5 to CT, and 1.5 damage to left arm. After two missiles, the CT has taken 4 damage and you only hit it once. That's a problem, and basically you do not have to do ANYTHING, except press a button when fighting lights. you don't aim, you don't even need to do anything except make the circle go red and *click*. Heck, you can be 2 feet away from him, run past him at 150kph, and according to the devs as long as your target was within the 45degree angle that the lock requires, you hit them! Yay! streaks lol!